SONET Route Protection

Self-Healing Alternate Route Protection (SHARP)

Losing data on your local loop is so 1994. Self-Healing Alternate Route Protection (SHARP) is an optional feature of CenturyLink's DS1, DS3, and SST services that answers your need for 100 percent assurance of system reliability in the local loop.

Point-to-point transport

Designed for moderate to heavy volumes

Establishes two physically separate routes for the working service path and the protect path

On SST, SHARP is available at the system level and 30151, for example, OC3

SHARP is provisioned solely on fiber optics using a 1 X 1 protection scheme that provides a backup for every system component

Installation in as few as two days

Variable contract options

Guaranteed: If a cable is cut or transmission quality degrades to an unacceptable level, and SHARP fails to switch to the protect path within one second, CenturyLink will credit you for a month's billing for the affected service. See our Service Level Agreement for complete details.

Description

Standard Network Service reliability of 99.99 percent, exceeding industry norms, and a standard bit error rate of 10[-9] or one error in one billion bits

Service guaranteed through Service Level Agreements

Installation intervals have been reduced from nine to two working days at selected locations

Improved pricing - the SHARP option is now availability with either circuit (per DS3) or system-level protection (per system). Carriers with more than four DS3s terminating at a single location will benefit from the system-level pricing structure

Features

High-speed host-to-host channel networking

Load balancing

Centralized data processing

Integrated voice and data

CAD-to-CAD transfer

High-speed file transfer

Either circuit (per DS3) or system-level protection (per system) - carriers with more than four DS3s terminating at a single location will benefit from the system-level pricing structure

CenturyLink Self-Healing Alternate Route Protection (SHARP) Plus service is available in locations where CenturyLink facilities exist in the contiguous United States and, until CenturyLink receives regulatory authorization to provide interLATA services, it is only available on an intraLATA basis in the states of AZ, CO, IA, ID, MN, MT, NE, NM, ND, OR, SD, UT, WA and WY.